Entirely illogical jumping confidence issues

[trakehners]

Just for a little bit of amusement in advance of my ride tomorrow/show this weekend: tonight I conducted the incredibly scientific experiment that was watching back a looped video of the approach/jump/landing of one of my good fences last night while cycling through my music library to determine what song matches my canter pace before I actually try it out under saddle.

I have determined that my ideal 2’6”/2’9” canter pace (for my horse’s stride) is somewhere between Another One Bites The Dust (110 bpm) and Don’t Stop Believin’ (approximately 118-120 bpm depending on who you believe on the internet, I am not getting out my metronome to check right now), which is to say, not very fast at all despite my brain’s belief otherwise and also two songs that may actually be engraved on my bones given how well I know them, which bodes well for my ability to remember them under pressure. Sadly my favorite song in the world (Thunder Road) will have to wait til I need a 140 bpm pace. I’ll have to warn my trainer so she isn’t surprised to hear me singing when I go cantering past the in-gate this weekend

To add a little bit of context to my theory behind this: music isn’t actually in my lizard brain but it feels like it is. I’ve been playing piano since I was six and have historically used music to process… pretty much everything about my life, to the point where it’s basically the only thing that has ever reliably cut through and grounded me during my very real panic attacks (which are thankfully few and far between these days and never on horseback), so I’ll be very curious to see if this actually makes a difference for me or not in the saddle. The innate sense of timing/tempo is there when I have to play/sing a song but not at all reliable when I have to canter so maybe marrying the two together will trick my brain into going along with it.

Will report back after this weekend on whether it helped!

[LawsofMurph]

@trakehners

I have determined that my ideal 2’6”/2’9” canter pace (for my horse’s stride) is somewhere between Another One Bites The Dust (110 bpm) and Don’t Stop Believin’ (approximately 118-120 bpm depending on who you believe on the internet, I am not getting out my metronome to check right now),

This is a possibly dumb suggestion, but try riding to The Imperial March from Star Wars. The majority of it matches the canter beat sooooo well.

It may be a bit too slow for your striding, but I feel it also inspires confidence (at least in this anxious rider)

[Ajierene]

From someone else with stadium jumping confidence issues, for me the difference between stadium and cross country is the distance between the jumps. With cross country I can spend 10 strides after a jump “recovering”, 10 strides riding, 10 strides setting up for the next jump - which includes picking a treetop to STARE at so I don’t look down at the jump. (stare at tree top, grab neck strap, hang on for the last 5 strides and my horse does her job).

Stadium is like AHH JUMP…AAAH JUMP…AAH JUMP…I’m still recovering from jump 1 at jump 3!

That may be even more the case for you if you are saying 2 strides mess you up.

So, some things I have done:

Set up just a few jumps instead of trying a course. One at a height well within my comfort and one on the edge of comfort. Jump the low one a few times then sneak in and jump the higher one. Sometimes I will just stop jumping after that one jump of the “scary” one. It’s amazing the difference when you end the ride on that one good one instead of going in and trying to make it “just a bit better” and end up getting in your head to much. Then go back and incoorporate the jump a bit more.

Having just one or two jumps in the arena also means more “cool down” time, if necessary (like what you get riding cross country). You can then build to a course and just make one jump in the course at the edge of that comfort level, then two, then so on.

Same thing if 2 strides are a problem - one jump on one side, a two stride on the other. Jump the one jump a few times, then “sneak in” the 2 stride when you are feeling good, then end the first session after that one successful attempt with lots of praise for yourself and your pony - I know the power of positive thinking sounds so hookey to many people but it really does help to end on that good note and “cement” it with a lot of praise. Now instead of thinking of how you “screwed up”, you are in a mindset of how you did well and the next time you can increase incrementally.

Anyway, that’s how I trick my brain - as a note, I don’t count strides or anything because I lack good depth perception so I have to just ride the canter and hope my mare knows how to count strides.

[trakehners]

We’ll see how it goes in the show ring this weekend when I can’t have an AirPod in but after my test ride tonight music may legitimately be 80% of the answer to this problem for the moment. I made myself a short playlist of songs ranging from 110 to 140 bpm and did a little trial run to see what it would do and turns out it works

I only did maybe 10 fences because I don’t want to kill him for this weekend, but we jumped nearly all the individual fences (read: not lines) out of stride and I didn’t choke him or chase him. I’m not sure if he doesn’t trust me or doesn’t trust himself (or, more accurately, his body) coming into combinations because he throws a shuffle step in before the first fence even when the stride is right there (and has been doing that for most of the summer), but either way, if I can nail the single fences 80% of the time (or at least close enough that it’s not a huge effort to adjust) then hopefully he’ll learn to trust both of us enough to trust the combinations too.

[Willesdon]

@trakehners Nice one! Good luck at the show.

[trakehners]

Well, I’m not sure if it was the music, the initial post in this thread, my trainer’s words finally sinking in, or the fact that I rode four of my five classes without gloves because we got soaked by a downpour before and during our first class and they were entirely useless after that, but today was a success!

Schooling yesterday didn’t go all that well because he gets really buzzy in schooling/warmup rings and his brain completely checks out (which then makes me react in less-than-productive ways). We had one really good bending line at the end after we both had ten minutes to stand and collect ourselves but a lot of the rest of it was rough.

We did a class of 0.70s as a warmup that was just kind of backwards (though not for lack of trying to get forward). The entire first two-thirds of the course he just felt… stuck through his back, probably from getting soaked and then standing and getting soaked again. He finally loosened at the end for the last few fences and we did jump clear, just slow.

The warmup ring was empty before our 0.80s (about an hour later, so he went back to his stall and had a drink and snack) so I took him in and hand-galloped a couple of laps. He was super forward and with me for both 0.80 rounds. We did pull a few rails but it was quite positive overall.

He sort of lost his mind in the first of our 0.90s because the rider before us fell and her horse took off through the gate and across the show grounds which he did not like. The footing was also pretty deep by that point from all the rain (but not slippery) so we were kind of stuck to the ground and definitely pulled some rails just because of that. I got a bit backward for the first handful of fences in our second round but through one bigger turn I was able to pull myself out of it, settle both of us, and get forward for the second half of the course rather than having it get progressively more off the rails as we went. We also nailed the one-stride combination in every course but the first one.

My trainer was very pleased and we agreed that there’s obviously still a lot to work on but I finally found my gear for these courses and my riding got better overall as we went along. We also placed in three of our classes which wasn’t really the point at all but it’s nice to have the tangible proof that we can actually produce results when I remember how to ride, lol.

Poor-quality video screenshot of a very pingy boy over our final fence for tax ft. me very much not looking where I’m going :

[chocolate_chip_in]

What a great update, I’m so glad to hear that you had a productive and educational trip out! And that looks like a fantastic jump to end on

[TwiSedai]

If it helps, that looks HUGE to me so you are already doing better than I am ! way to go !

[greysfordays]

Music is super helpful! It feels like you are skilled in your body, your brain is just noisy.

This will sound nutty, but similar to your riding with music, try calling a good friend who knows about horses and having a catch up conversation while you jump over some small jumps. They should know you’re doing this and that you might hang up if it’s not working. This has accidentally happened to me a few times and I was stunned how suddenly all my approaches were smooth and I was jumping most things perfectly out of stride.

For me and this is a BIG YMMV, this is enough to get my verbal brain out of the way, and get into the more automatic muscle memory place. You feel the pace and impulsion with all those internal perceptors and accelerometers in your brain, it’s a lot of the same stuff that keeps you safe when you’re deep in thought driving and realize suddenly you had checked out.

I wouldn’t recommend this to a beginner or someone who didn’t have the hours of saddle time you have, especially being so successful over solid fences. I really think that means your perception equipment is excellent, you just need to find a way to let it be in front of your verbal brain.

The phone call is helpful, because the person cannot see what you’re doing. If you had your trainer talking to you, they will naturally slow down or stop talking when you approach a jump, exactly when you need your verbal brain to get lost. But that would admittedly be a safer way to do this. Please don’t die doing this, I can’t have that on my conscience, I already work in finance, it’s bad enough as it is.

[endlessclimb]

@greysfordays

Please don’t die doing this, I can’t have that on my conscience, I already work in finance, it’s bad enough as it is.

[libgrrl]

Hunter/jumper trainer I rode with for a bit used to tell her students to count backward from 1000 if they were nervous or fiddling.

[luvmyhackney]

@greysfordays

Music is super helpful! It feels like you are skilled in your body, your brain is just noisy.

I’m only jumping baby speed bumps but I tried music in the indoor as it’s so quiet it makes my brain go to worst case scenarios. I get jumpy and can’t focus, then my horse feeds off of my startle. It worked! Ride was much better.

Next time I’ll try a work call, those are always mind numbing.

[trakehners]

@greysfordays

I wouldn’t recommend this to a beginner or someone who didn’t have the hours of saddle time you have, especially being so successful over solid fences. I really think that means your perception equipment is excellent, you just need to find a way to let it be in front of your verbal brain.

That’s definitely it—I can actually show jump just fine when I catch ride and really don’t know the horse (and thus have to be almost entirely reliant on all the things that I don’t have to actively think about). I spent so much time having to actively micromanage my horse over the last few years that I still feel like I should ride him that way even though he doesn’t need it anymore and that definitely gets in the way of the part of my brain that actually knows what’s going on and what to do.

I haven’t done any courses since the show but we’ve been working a lot on getting my horse to be more comfortable lifting his back and softening at the canter and then cantering (smallish, probably 2’6”) verticals with a placing rail on either side to get both of us familiar with our pace (now that I finally found it) and not changing it (via me micromanaging) as we approach and land. I think we’ve actually been testing your theory a bit because some of my lessons are as much gab sessions as they are educational experiences and my trainer has definitely been carrying on regular conversations with me while I’ve been jumping to the point where I’ll be finishing my sentence over a fence, and I haven’t dramatically bombed anything since schooling at the show… I’ll have to ask her if she’s been doing it on purpose (knowing her as well as I do and for as long as I have, I wouldn’t be surprised if she is).

We did go XC schooling a couple of weeks ago and mostly jumped Novice and Training fences which I didn’t realize til we got to one that was still flagged and I called my trainer out on it (speaking of perception, I apparently have no idea how big most XC fences are if they aren’t legitimately massive or marked for the level, which she finds hilarious). We were coming up to one, I put my leg on to get the move-up for the distance (which we nailed), and my trainer yelled “WHY CAN’T YOU SHOW JUMP LIKE THAT???” as I went galloping away We’ve agreed that I just need to somehow convince my brain that every SJ fence is a Training XC skinny. We also agreed I’m not moving up to Novice til I can consistently do meter jumper classes successfully so that Novice SJ will look/feel small (my proposal but she’s on board with it).

@greysfordays

Please don’t die doing this, I can’t have that on my conscience, I already work in finance, it’s bad enough as it is.

I also work in finance, I understand this feeling completely and will endeavor to not add to your burden with my untimely demise, lol.

[Nancy2]

I was having a hard time moving from Training to Prelim here in Canada. And the sticks falling down scare me. I was very nervous until I took a ruler and placed it on my desk vertically and saw how little six inches really was.

That made the difference for me. Sounds like you have done a good job working it out.

Nancy